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Cambodian Grrrl by Anne Elizabeth Moore

Posted by Matthew Moyer on October 7, 2010

Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh
Anne Elizabeth Moore

When Punk Planet, the zine that longtime zinester and activist Anne Elizabeth Moore had co-edited and published for three years, closed its doors in 2007, one could be forgiven for thinking that maybe she entered into at least a short period of mourning or depression. Not so. Moore decamped to Cambodia, starting a program where she mentored young women students in areas of creative expression and self-publishing. In a country like Cambodia, where the media is an arm of the government, this work is potentially revolutionary. In this dispatch from Cambodia, Moore delivers six brief vignettes of her experiences instructing these women. You get the sense that Moore feels slightly in awe of these women, most taking classes seven days a week (sometimes multiple degrees from multiple universities), and living in the first all-girls dorm in the country, and yet still they have seemingly boundless reserves of energy in learning about self-publishing and making zines. Zines! For tangible evidence of the work Moore is doing in Cambodia, check out the website Camb(l)o(g)dia or the book New Girl Law, overseen by her, written by her students.

As a final, perfect valediction, Moore includes an excerpt of the original, incendiary Riot Grrrl manifesto, as if to show that, yeah, what can be used to destroy can be used to create as well. 1000000000000000% punk rock.